Page 27 - WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE DISCOVERING ENGLAND

hen friends ask us where they should go in Lon- to the safer headquarters here dubbed “Number 10 Annexe.” photo courtesy OF Heather Cowper
don—after visiting the usual touristy sites such as Known as a tough task master, he often endured 18-hour days, keep-
Westminster Abbey, Tower of London, Changing ing his exhausted staff working late hours. Employing no speech
of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and surveying
W the city atop The London Eye—my husband Carl writers, Churchill dictated his own, which inspired not only his fellow
British citizens but worldwide allies. He delivered four impassioned
and I have just the answer. We frequently visit this popular, historic wartime speeches from these Cabinet War Rooms.
city and always recommend the Churchill Museum and War Rooms,
which have been open to the public nearly 30 years. Elizabeth Nel, one of his secretaries, remembered not completing a
dictation until 4:30 one morning.
It was here, in these secret underground rooms not far from Bucking-
ham Palace, where Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a former army Her boss, she recalls on an audiotape, would pace the room while dic-
reporter hailing from a distinguished family, safely and successfully tating, always with a cigar in his mouth--and always requested two
conducted World War II operations. And much of the rooms are eerily carbon copies. “You must be prepared to go fast and for heavens sake
left—or at least reconstructed--just as they were during those dark don’t make any errors,” she remembered of those stressful days. Not
days from 1939-1945. The same desks, wall clocks, telephones, chairs, seeing much light of day, she and other secretaries were known to use
typewriters, gas masks, cots, maps. sun lamps to avoid vitamin D deficiency.

The only thing missing is the stuffy cigar and cigarette smoke "He could be charming and generous,” one secretary recalled, “but
and the occasional putrid smells from the primitive toilet fa- also exasperating, rude, and bad tempered.” Yet he inspired devotion
cilities in these cramped quarters. It’s hard to imagine that among his staff.
Churchill and his staff—and, at times, his family—worked, One displayed sign sums up the work routine: “There is to be no whis-
lived, ate, and slept here. In fact, Churchill had relocated from tling or unnecessary noise in this passage.”
the Prime Minister’s nearby official home at 10 Downing Street

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